OK, first off some major thanks are in order. To all the volunteers who made the Beach to Beacon happen today--thank you! You're the best and I'm in absolute awe of your efficiency in moving and cleaning up after over 5,000 human machines! Truly amazing! Special thanks to each and every person that handed me or sprayed me with sweet sweet H2O! Honestly, I never realized how much of a difference water makes while you're running (I never ran any kind of distance race before, so lay off, huh).
Next, to all the spectators who cheered us on--a big fat Thank You! Never realized how much of a boost that simple cheer and that beautiful sideline enthusiasm can make. Really, I felt like I had a can of NOS in my back pocket every time I came into a group of spectators. Thank you for turning out!
To Julie Lake for carting our sweating, stinky hides around--thank you! You're the best and it's been far too long since we've seen you! Glad to have you back in our lives! And to Guido for making the long haul up here to the North-country wilds just to take a picture and slap me five--meant a lot! And I know Becca appreciated talking to you after her accident!
So, by this point, you know that the Beach to Beacon is over, I finished and I had a great time and am exceptionally thankful for all the people along the way. Really, I don't know if all races are like this one, or if B2B is an exception (and I mean that doubly in the sense of "exceptional") but DAMN! what a great event! And for how awesome everyone was, I feel like I need to commit to volunteer in some future year should I be denied entry.
And as long as I'm giving shout outs and mad props, I need to give a mad-dopeness award to my lovely wife for a truly Herculean effort. For anyone who doesn't know the back story on this one, Becca & I registered for this hootenanny together with the intention of training together and of using this race as a motivator to start getting back in shape. Well, as the cosmic whoopie cushion would have it, B got sick not too long ago. With a heaping helping of pneumonia. As in double-barreled. Yup. Both lungsacks. And at the same time, even. Needless to say, that put a little bit of a crimp in her stride. AND...then, after getting past the worst of the lung-buttery goodness, she was exposed to and tested positive for the old oink-oink. Yup. H1N1--the so-called Swine Flu.
So again, Becca has not really been able to train for this race. And then (yeah, as if that wasn't enough, right?), after she decided to walk the course so that she could at least finish, take this as Day 1 to train for another race, etc. her walking partner wound up in the ED last night. So, as we approached the stat line, Becca was resigning herself to having to walk this thing alone. But big thing here was that, in my humble opinion, I thought it took great big sacks of juice to step up and say "the past two months have pretty much sucked from a health point-of view, but eff it--I'm going to finish this thing any way I can." Big-ass awesomeness, right? Made me really proud, anyway, and if the rest of you disagree, you can flip the eff right off.
So, and this I was not there to witness, but Becca linked up with a couple of other gals that were walking the course and they were walking together, making good progress...until...wait for it....the girl walking directly behind my wife, gets run and knocked over by some kid on bike not paying attention. All three girls went down and needed tending to. The girl in front of Becca wound up in the back of an ambulance en route to Maine Med for her injuries. Becca, after getting cleaned up by the paramedics on scene, refuses to go to the medical tent and decides to walk back to the car to wait for us.
After doing the math, we realized, after the fact, that Becca actually completed the full distance of the race, just not all of it on the course. So, the sum up to this part of the race coverage: my wife, still recovering in one lung from pneumonia (yeah, it really takes that long to get over, believe it or not--just ask someone who's had it) and injured still managed to do 6 miles, give or take. In my book that's pretty awesome. And I think it deserved extra-special mention, since if you look at her name on the site, you won't see a completion time since she never crossed the finish line. In my, somewhat humble opinion, she won her own race.
Anyhow, watch for us on the Trail to Ale 10K that we start training for this week. Race is September 29th (I think). We'll be there and running our hindparts off for that beer at the end.
And finally, all that nervousness must have just channeled into my running. In the end, I had a great race, had a lot of fun, and finished in what I think, again in my humble opinion, is a very respectable time, especially for a beginner.
Results: Gun time - 1:20:06
Net time - 1:13:26 (in other words, the time from when I actually crossed the start line)
Pace - 11:49
Which is to say, better than the 12:20 pace I expected based on my last distance run. All in all a good day for a run. ...but next time, I'll remember to actually use the sunscreen...
Showing posts with label strength. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strength. Show all posts
01 August 2009
21 February 2009
back from mars...
...so, it's been a little while and a long, strange trip. But in the immortal words of Gloria Gaynor, I'm back...from outer space. I just walked in found that my previous attempts at continous writing and posting, etc were still haunting the worldwide web. In the interest of all things raw, fleshy and high-octane, I've updated the look of the site and will continue to refine for your viewing, reading and using pleasure.
Needless to say, much has happened in the intervening year and a half, likely much more than
many of my faithful readers (all zero of them now) actually care to read about. Let's just say we're on our way back from the far side.
As I come back from deep-space hibernation, there are a few relatively unrelated things worth mention:
First off, a great big endorsement of another blog: AlbieRock.com. I recently came across this blog after purchasing a piece of Albie's art which is the battle-beastly dopeness. If you haven't read or heard of him, go check out his blog, immediate-like, and receive the troof with a big fat capital T. Albie's daily rant about the goings-on of his life as it pertains to life in general is worth reading and taking to heart. I've got to give credit where credit is due--following the posts was in large part responsible for my rekindled interest in resurrecting this old unwieldy, somewhat rambling beast. Keep it cranked to eleven, yo!
Next, another blog worth reading: BorrowedSuits.blogspot.com. This is my buddy Jim's ongoing commentary on all things political and pertinent in our realm. Jim's one of the most insightful people I know when it comes to politics and the workings of our great **ahem** nation. For a periodic dose of perspective on the news and current events, follow BorrowedSuits and get the mothballs out.
I've got to give props to the members of T.Doc Creative's local futball club--2nd session just finished up and between new additions and ongoing hustle, we finished in fourth place in the regular season and though knocked out in the first round of tournament play, managed to force the decision into PK overtime. If only we had a better goalie...Great job and great season to everyone and looking forward to another solid session starting next week. Anyone interested in some live soccer action ala Slapshot, we play on Thursday nights at The Dome on Warren Ave. You can find the schedule here: http://portlandsportscomplex.com/index.cfm?area=show_schedule&global_id=IS_Adult_Coed_Soccer_Rec_Session_2
And finally, but certainly not least, a brief memorial: for those of you who knew her, today is a bittersweet day. Today marks seven years since Karen Geneseo, my mother died. I tried to say "passed away" but that just seems like such a pansy-@$, weak way of thinking of it. So, the fullness of it, and try to grok it, is that she died seven years ago after a massive battle with the Big C. Three of them, in fact. In seven years, I haven't really thought about it much and I've really only remembered her in a kind of intangible, separated way. I guess partly to move on, partly because other things, i.e. life, takes up so much T-I-M-E, partly because it sucks trying to come to grips with the loss of someone so particularly awesome.
Now, it's easy to say your mom is awesome. "She's great. She's my mom. She's the best mom EVER!" Yeah, OK, I get it. Everyone, mostly, loves their mom and, if all is right with the world thinks highly of the woman that brought them into the world and is likely responsible for a huge part of who they are.
However, when I say that my mother was particularly awesome, it's really quite a huge understatement. My mother was a truly epic woman that lived a full, deliberate and adventurous life worthy of emulating. And it is a tragedy to have lost her so young. God knows her loss left a great gaping scar across my family. But seeing how this is the anniversary of her death, I think it's mostly appropriate to remember that today.
My mother was relatively healthy, i.e. didn't really drink, certainly didn't smoke and had never even been tempted by drugs despite having lived through the sixties. She walked several miles daily and ate fairly well. On a relatively routine visit to the doc's, they found ovarian cysts. Appointments were made and a minor surgery was scheduled to have them removed. And when I say minor, I mean two incisions, a quick scrape and clean, a couple of stitches and then home for tea and triscuits. Really, like a three-hour affair, including the wait time before, 'cuz we all know how the hospital rolls.
Now, when they opened her up for the scrape and bake, what they found was not ovarian cysts, but a whole eff-load of the Big C. Mom was lucky in that the doc who was performing had the knowledge, the experience and the expertise to not only know what she was looking at and know what needed to be done, but also had the ability and the stones to just get it done. On-the-spot emergency full hysterectomy. And it must be noted that both my moms and my pops had some big-@$ stones to be able to make that decision right then and there. I cannot imagine the gravity of that decision and know full well that many, many weak-sauce anybodies would have floundered and lost the moment.
The good news was that they thought they got everything. The bad news was that when they went back in a week later to make sure they got everything they realized that there was in fact a whole eff-load more of the vileness all wrapped up in my mom's guts. Metastasization anyone? Yeah, that's the real kick in the 'nads right there, innit? Like the screened goal off the rebound or a punch to the dome wrapped around a roll of pennies. Severe crapulousness.
The Docs (and we're going to capitalize this in reference to the several doctors and months of tests they--my mom and dad--went through) gave her 6 months. How's that for some cold, mutha-uckin' sh@t-salad served up, huh? Go to the doc one day with nothing wrong and a handful of days later you get a big, fat death-sentence dropped on you. And then the question becomes: do we fight it and inject, vile, toxic nastiness straight from the Nth circle and get sick from the cure or do we say "eff it" and see how long we can stay healthy before the cancer starts making us sick? Cause in all reality, in the case of cancer, it is definitely a case of the cure being worse than the cause.
Not an easy choice, but my folks stepped up and went straight into lockdown, survivalist, back-me-into-a-corner fisticuffs mode. Aggressive chemo and radiation, plus whatever cutting-edge new study, possible cure kind of drugs were out there. They never backed down, didn't stop doing the things they loved, just modified how they did them and when, didn't stop going to the places they loved. Didn't let the disease own them.
And we all got front-row, blood rains down on your tux from the knockout punch ringside seats to the battle and got to witness my mother, a vivrant, young, early 50s woman, mother, wife, teacher, daughter, aunt, friend and all-around awesomeness wasted away as the cancer and the chemo and everything else out there gnawed its way out from the inside.
By this point in the story, if you're still reading and you have half a brain cell, you know how this ends.Sort of. Because my mom died in the same way that she lived--strong and on her terms. They gave her 6 months. Two years later, she let go after a long, harrowing fight. After her diagnosis, she managed to get in two more Christmasses, two more Thanksgivings, two more Halloweens, two more summers at the beach and two more anniversaries with my father. In that time, despite many complications, close calls, midnight trips to the hospital and all the other indignities of fighting an ugly, petty disease of epic proportions, she stayed fierce and strong.
On her anniversary, Valentine's Day, she wound up in Mass General, and despite the gravity of the situation, when I went to see her that night, was more concerned with getting me a date with one of the nurses she said was "a nice girl and pretty" than with her own comfort. When she got home, her condition got rapidly worse and hospice started. As things degraded she became house-bound and tied to a morphine drip, she made sure she was clear enough to visit with everyone she loved, to say good-bye, to allow them to see her and come to terms with it. She waited for her brother to come, finally, after much delay--I think she knew how hard it was on him, how hard a time he was going to have with it. She waited till the weather broke. She waited till my father, brother and I were all in the room with her and the priest had said last rites and left.
And then she let go.
No sooner were the three of us back in the room with her after seeing Father Degnan to the door than she let out her last breath. My brother was holding her hand and looked up to say "she's gone" but he didn't need to. We all knew. We all felt it. And suddenly it wasn't this epic woman lying there in the bed. It was just a husk.
It was a Friday. And her body was still just a husk at the wake on Monday night and at the funeral on Tuesday. Middle of February and it was 55 degrees out and sunny. Go figure. And by the way Jeff, she showed up in a dream recently and wanted you to know that she thought your comment about the incense in the church was funny.
I've thought a lot about death since then. I've thought about the sauce it took to make it through. I've thought a lot about the dignity with which my mom took it and that many people don't get that chance. And the tough part is, there is no answer or massive revelation to be taken from the experience and there is no meaning behind why some people die when they do. And as much as it sucked, hard. There's nothing wrong or bad or even necessarily tragic about death. Because everyone dies. Period. It's just a fact of life. The part that's tragic is when sh@t's left undone. If you live each day as if it were your last, your death will be much less tragic when it comes. And it will come. And the getting to dead part, generally, that part sucks too. I mean, there's really nothing too fun about fighting cancer for two years. For that matter there's really nothing too fun about overdosing and bleeding out your eyes to death. Or terminal diarrhea. Or being killed in a car crash or drowning in freezing water, trapped under the ice or being trapped in a burning building or in being the victim of a random, violent attack or the countless, myriad other ways to meet your ultimate demise. It's not he being dead part that sucks. It's the dying. And the leaving behind. And the knowing that there was stuff you left undone.
I learned stuff, a lot of stuff, from my mother, every day of my life. And I guess there are lessons to be learned in her death, in the way she met it and, more importantly, in the way she lived. Which is to say, fully, strongly and uncompromisingly.
Strength is important. You've got to have the juice to keep going and keep being dope. In talking about strength, I think it's important to mention a few other folks today. First, my old man. My father had the stones and the juice to make the hard choices and live that god-awful, gnawing, vile disease right alongside my mother and never look away. If you want an idea of how hard this is, go to the pet store and get a gold fish. When you get home take it out of the water and watch it till it stops twitching. Just the idea of this makes you queasy, right? Now imagine watching while that happened to the one person you loved above all others, that you had spent 30+ years with, committed and there was nothing you could do except watch. That's some hard-hitting, no-bullsh@t, high-octane stones right there. That is love. That is commitment.
Next up, my mother-in-law, the woman that bore my lovely wife for almost ten months. For as much crap as I give her, she's a pretty awesome lady and from what I understand beat the Big C. Word!
Our friend Jamie's mom is going through this right now as well. Big Ol' Mutha-uckin' C. And she's taking it on the best she can. Big "Keep the faith!"s out to Jamie's mom and Jamie for doing th right thing.
I realize this has been wordy and for all you uned-u-mi-cated slogs out there, sorry there's no pictures. But this is about what's on my mind. So if you follow, just found or have been waiting for more posts on RocketFuelSushi, I'm back. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell your frenemies, whatever. I'm not going anywhere for a minute, so find me on the air, and I'll keep the science coming.
Needless to say, much has happened in the intervening year and a half, likely much more than
many of my faithful readers (all zero of them now) actually care to read about. Let's just say we're on our way back from the far side.
As I come back from deep-space hibernation, there are a few relatively unrelated things worth mention:
First off, a great big endorsement of another blog: AlbieRock.com. I recently came across this blog after purchasing a piece of Albie's art which is the battle-beastly dopeness. If you haven't read or heard of him, go check out his blog, immediate-like, and receive the troof with a big fat capital T. Albie's daily rant about the goings-on of his life as it pertains to life in general is worth reading and taking to heart. I've got to give credit where credit is due--following the posts was in large part responsible for my rekindled interest in resurrecting this old unwieldy, somewhat rambling beast. Keep it cranked to eleven, yo!
Next, another blog worth reading: BorrowedSuits.blogspot.com. This is my buddy Jim's ongoing commentary on all things political and pertinent in our realm. Jim's one of the most insightful people I know when it comes to politics and the workings of our great **ahem** nation. For a periodic dose of perspective on the news and current events, follow BorrowedSuits and get the mothballs out.
I've got to give props to the members of T.Doc Creative's local futball club--2nd session just finished up and between new additions and ongoing hustle, we finished in fourth place in the regular season and though knocked out in the first round of tournament play, managed to force the decision into PK overtime. If only we had a better goalie...Great job and great season to everyone and looking forward to another solid session starting next week. Anyone interested in some live soccer action ala Slapshot, we play on Thursday nights at The Dome on Warren Ave. You can find the schedule here: http://portlandsportscomplex.com/index.cfm?area=show_schedule&global_id=IS_Adult_Coed_Soccer_Rec_Session_2
And finally, but certainly not least, a brief memorial: for those of you who knew her, today is a bittersweet day. Today marks seven years since Karen Geneseo, my mother died. I tried to say "passed away" but that just seems like such a pansy-@$, weak way of thinking of it. So, the fullness of it, and try to grok it, is that she died seven years ago after a massive battle with the Big C. Three of them, in fact. In seven years, I haven't really thought about it much and I've really only remembered her in a kind of intangible, separated way. I guess partly to move on, partly because other things, i.e. life, takes up so much T-I-M-E, partly because it sucks trying to come to grips with the loss of someone so particularly awesome.
Now, it's easy to say your mom is awesome. "She's great. She's my mom. She's the best mom EVER!" Yeah, OK, I get it. Everyone, mostly, loves their mom and, if all is right with the world thinks highly of the woman that brought them into the world and is likely responsible for a huge part of who they are.
However, when I say that my mother was particularly awesome, it's really quite a huge understatement. My mother was a truly epic woman that lived a full, deliberate and adventurous life worthy of emulating. And it is a tragedy to have lost her so young. God knows her loss left a great gaping scar across my family. But seeing how this is the anniversary of her death, I think it's mostly appropriate to remember that today.
My mother was relatively healthy, i.e. didn't really drink, certainly didn't smoke and had never even been tempted by drugs despite having lived through the sixties. She walked several miles daily and ate fairly well. On a relatively routine visit to the doc's, they found ovarian cysts. Appointments were made and a minor surgery was scheduled to have them removed. And when I say minor, I mean two incisions, a quick scrape and clean, a couple of stitches and then home for tea and triscuits. Really, like a three-hour affair, including the wait time before, 'cuz we all know how the hospital rolls.
Now, when they opened her up for the scrape and bake, what they found was not ovarian cysts, but a whole eff-load of the Big C. Mom was lucky in that the doc who was performing had the knowledge, the experience and the expertise to not only know what she was looking at and know what needed to be done, but also had the ability and the stones to just get it done. On-the-spot emergency full hysterectomy. And it must be noted that both my moms and my pops had some big-@$ stones to be able to make that decision right then and there. I cannot imagine the gravity of that decision and know full well that many, many weak-sauce anybodies would have floundered and lost the moment.
The good news was that they thought they got everything. The bad news was that when they went back in a week later to make sure they got everything they realized that there was in fact a whole eff-load more of the vileness all wrapped up in my mom's guts. Metastasization anyone? Yeah, that's the real kick in the 'nads right there, innit? Like the screened goal off the rebound or a punch to the dome wrapped around a roll of pennies. Severe crapulousness.
The Docs (and we're going to capitalize this in reference to the several doctors and months of tests they--my mom and dad--went through) gave her 6 months. How's that for some cold, mutha-uckin' sh@t-salad served up, huh? Go to the doc one day with nothing wrong and a handful of days later you get a big, fat death-sentence dropped on you. And then the question becomes: do we fight it and inject, vile, toxic nastiness straight from the Nth circle and get sick from the cure or do we say "eff it" and see how long we can stay healthy before the cancer starts making us sick? Cause in all reality, in the case of cancer, it is definitely a case of the cure being worse than the cause.
Not an easy choice, but my folks stepped up and went straight into lockdown, survivalist, back-me-into-a-corner fisticuffs mode. Aggressive chemo and radiation, plus whatever cutting-edge new study, possible cure kind of drugs were out there. They never backed down, didn't stop doing the things they loved, just modified how they did them and when, didn't stop going to the places they loved. Didn't let the disease own them.
And we all got front-row, blood rains down on your tux from the knockout punch ringside seats to the battle and got to witness my mother, a vivrant, young, early 50s woman, mother, wife, teacher, daughter, aunt, friend and all-around awesomeness wasted away as the cancer and the chemo and everything else out there gnawed its way out from the inside.
By this point in the story, if you're still reading and you have half a brain cell, you know how this ends.Sort of. Because my mom died in the same way that she lived--strong and on her terms. They gave her 6 months. Two years later, she let go after a long, harrowing fight. After her diagnosis, she managed to get in two more Christmasses, two more Thanksgivings, two more Halloweens, two more summers at the beach and two more anniversaries with my father. In that time, despite many complications, close calls, midnight trips to the hospital and all the other indignities of fighting an ugly, petty disease of epic proportions, she stayed fierce and strong.
On her anniversary, Valentine's Day, she wound up in Mass General, and despite the gravity of the situation, when I went to see her that night, was more concerned with getting me a date with one of the nurses she said was "a nice girl and pretty" than with her own comfort. When she got home, her condition got rapidly worse and hospice started. As things degraded she became house-bound and tied to a morphine drip, she made sure she was clear enough to visit with everyone she loved, to say good-bye, to allow them to see her and come to terms with it. She waited for her brother to come, finally, after much delay--I think she knew how hard it was on him, how hard a time he was going to have with it. She waited till the weather broke. She waited till my father, brother and I were all in the room with her and the priest had said last rites and left.
And then she let go.
No sooner were the three of us back in the room with her after seeing Father Degnan to the door than she let out her last breath. My brother was holding her hand and looked up to say "she's gone" but he didn't need to. We all knew. We all felt it. And suddenly it wasn't this epic woman lying there in the bed. It was just a husk.
It was a Friday. And her body was still just a husk at the wake on Monday night and at the funeral on Tuesday. Middle of February and it was 55 degrees out and sunny. Go figure. And by the way Jeff, she showed up in a dream recently and wanted you to know that she thought your comment about the incense in the church was funny.
I've thought a lot about death since then. I've thought about the sauce it took to make it through. I've thought a lot about the dignity with which my mom took it and that many people don't get that chance. And the tough part is, there is no answer or massive revelation to be taken from the experience and there is no meaning behind why some people die when they do. And as much as it sucked, hard. There's nothing wrong or bad or even necessarily tragic about death. Because everyone dies. Period. It's just a fact of life. The part that's tragic is when sh@t's left undone. If you live each day as if it were your last, your death will be much less tragic when it comes. And it will come. And the getting to dead part, generally, that part sucks too. I mean, there's really nothing too fun about fighting cancer for two years. For that matter there's really nothing too fun about overdosing and bleeding out your eyes to death. Or terminal diarrhea. Or being killed in a car crash or drowning in freezing water, trapped under the ice or being trapped in a burning building or in being the victim of a random, violent attack or the countless, myriad other ways to meet your ultimate demise. It's not he being dead part that sucks. It's the dying. And the leaving behind. And the knowing that there was stuff you left undone.
I learned stuff, a lot of stuff, from my mother, every day of my life. And I guess there are lessons to be learned in her death, in the way she met it and, more importantly, in the way she lived. Which is to say, fully, strongly and uncompromisingly.
Strength is important. You've got to have the juice to keep going and keep being dope. In talking about strength, I think it's important to mention a few other folks today. First, my old man. My father had the stones and the juice to make the hard choices and live that god-awful, gnawing, vile disease right alongside my mother and never look away. If you want an idea of how hard this is, go to the pet store and get a gold fish. When you get home take it out of the water and watch it till it stops twitching. Just the idea of this makes you queasy, right? Now imagine watching while that happened to the one person you loved above all others, that you had spent 30+ years with, committed and there was nothing you could do except watch. That's some hard-hitting, no-bullsh@t, high-octane stones right there. That is love. That is commitment.
Next up, my mother-in-law, the woman that bore my lovely wife for almost ten months. For as much crap as I give her, she's a pretty awesome lady and from what I understand beat the Big C. Word!
Our friend Jamie's mom is going through this right now as well. Big Ol' Mutha-uckin' C. And she's taking it on the best she can. Big "Keep the faith!"s out to Jamie's mom and Jamie for doing th right thing.
I realize this has been wordy and for all you uned-u-mi-cated slogs out there, sorry there's no pictures. But this is about what's on my mind. So if you follow, just found or have been waiting for more posts on RocketFuelSushi, I'm back. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell your frenemies, whatever. I'm not going anywhere for a minute, so find me on the air, and I'll keep the science coming.
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